Out of Grief
by arandomshipper
Summary: This is an alternate ending to my story Grief. It picks up at the end of Chapter 3 of that story, so if you haven't gotten there, or read it at all, and try to read this, it probably won't make much sense. Rating is for violence.
1. Chapter 1

A/N: Here it is, the promised alternate ending to Grief. To be absolutely clear, this picks up where Chapter 3 ends, with the unknown villain about to be revealed, and in this story, it isn't Zorpox. It is still perfectly consistent with Chapters 1, 2 and 3, possibly even more so (though the retroactive explainations will change, obviously). That's because this was the ending I originally had in mind for the story (oops, secret's out). Then the story started to twist and turn and take on a life of its own, and I couldn't help but write the ending I ended up giving it...but I still loved the idea of this ending, and couldn't bring myself to discard it completely. SO!

Side A/N: I don't cuss. I also don't write cussing. I do, however, acknowledge the existence of people who cuss (or in this case, people who's personality makes it obvious they _would_ cuss, if they weren't on a kids show), and the necessity of accurately portraying those people. Thus, cussing exists in censored form in my stories...but ya'll know exactly what I mean by ****. Don't pretend you don't.

Oh!onemorething a/n: A quick plug for DragonGhost, from whom I essentially stole the title for this fic. DG wrote a sequel to the story Spite, by Hoagie, and called it Out of Spite (and both of those stories are very, very good, go read them now) so you can see the obvious correlation here.

Disclaimer: I'm just arandomshipper, not an owner.

 **Out Of Grief**

...to reveal the sharp-featured, beautiful face of a woman, framed by a mane of hair darker than midnight. A beautiful green face, wearing a trademark smirk.

"Shego!"

"Sidekick."

"Takes one to know one." He automatically responded. Then he shook his head. Now was not the time for quips! "How are you still alive?! They told me they found your body. In pieces."

Shego's face lost its amusement and took on a look Ron had never seen before, but it terrified him. It was like the embodiment of pure rage. "I told him. I told him so many times, I lost count. I put it in my *** **** contract, for ****'s sake! NO. CLONING! But does he listen? Noooo, he never listens to me! And now look what happened! My last, my very last source of good entertainment, gone because of that ****tard and his ******* stupid as **** clone! I'll tell you what, buffoon, I've forgiven a lot over the years, but I have my limits. I should've killed him back when he tried that whole mind control thing."

Ron, ears burning from the outburst, struggled to understand what he was being told. "So...Drakken made a clone of you...and that's what killed Kim?"

"Of course it was a clone!" She snorted. "If I wanted Princess dead I would've killed her a long time ago." Her face lost its anger and became unreadable. "He said this time the process was perfect. That the clone would be exact, including personality. If that was true, I would be the only good option for a subject, since he'd need someone who already works for him and is a competent fighter. I should have known what he intended, but I just went on my vacation like I always do, and...that clone may have been a perfect copy of me in every way, but it didn't have our history. Me and her. It didn't know that I...that I didn't want to kill her anymore." She shrugged. "Well, now it doesn't know anything. It's dead, along with the big blue idiot."

"So it was revenge after all." Ron said softly. "But then, why all the other murders?"

The smirk returned. "For fun, of course. I gotta have something to entertain myself, now that she's gone. With her, just fighting her was entertainment enough, Sure, I had to be careful how I used my powers, but other than that she could fight me almost equal. These other idiots...I don't even use my powers at all, and they don't last ten seconds! And they're supposed to be the most dangerous in the world? It's over too quick, and that ticks me off, so I always end up killing them. Except Dementor. He's pretty useful, coming up with things like that massive EMP bomb. Until he tries to betray me and escape his forced servitude-and he will eventually, of course-I'll keep him alive for a while longer."

"So all of this was just for your entertainment? You're slaughtering people left and right...for fun?"

Shego put a finger up to her chin, pretending to think about it. "Hmmmmm. Ayup. All for fun. I mean, what else is there in the world? Fun is the only thing worth pursuing."

"But Shego," Ron shook his head. "Your 'fun' is putting the whole world at risk here. If you keep killing whoever you want whenever you want, Global Justice will be shut down, and their peacekeeping efforts across the globe will stop. You can't be that selfish."

"Oh, my fun is putting the world at risk? Well in that case, I'll stop right away!" Shego poured on the sarcasm. "Who do you think you're talking to here, sidekick? Doi. News flash. I _am_ that selfish. I'm a supervillain who's been helping an insane psychopath try to take over the world for years, and if you think a world with no GJ is bad, just think for a minute what a world ruled by Drakken would be like. I. Don't. *******. Care. I'm not going to stop for the sake of the ******* world."

"Then I'll stop you."

Shego's smile widened and became more sinister. "Fine. Stop me. If you think you can. But the kid gloves are coming off now, and I'm putting on my adult gloves. How long do you think you can keep up?"

She tossed her black cloak aside in a manner reminiscent of a certain final boss on a 90's fighting game, revealing a suit vaguely resembling her old green catsuit, but completely black, not a hint of color. She brought her hands up and ignited them. Ron started. The green blaze was easily three times larger than her remembered.

"Oh, you like that? I had Dementor whip these babies up for me just in case I ran into someone worth my time. My old gloves were just designed to let me channel my powers through them, but these? These amplify my power. How much I'm really not sure, since I obviously haven't found anyone worth my time to try them out on...until now. Feeling special, sidekick? You earned my respect with that performance earlier."

"Right now I'm kinda wishing I hadn't." Ron said shakily, bringing his own hands up.

"Try not to die too fast." Shego whispered intensely, a wild look in her eye, just before she attacked.

END NOTE: This has officially become a trend. There's always more material than I think there is, or maybe I just take way more words to get what material I have out there. Either way, the result is that I keep having to extend my stories. If I think it's a one-shot, it's a three-shot. If I think it's a two-shot, it's a freaking 6 chapter story. This time though, I really don't have much material left. I'm extending this alternate ending to a two-shot to give myself leeway during the action, so that I can write more detailed exchanges if I feel like it. That kind of stuff can easily quadruple the length of a chapter, I've found. I guess the important point is, this alternate ending has another chapter coming, so don't panic that I'm leaving it on a cliffy. Though I may still end up doing that at the end...


	2. Chapter 2

A/N: To quote Boomstick from ScrewAttack..."It's over! It's finally over, we never have to hear about it again!" This chapter concludes the alternate ending for Grief, and thus the entire Grief series. I'm putting up a poll on my profile about which ending was better...and whether or not I should write a third ending for it. Which would fly in the face of my Boomstick quote that I just dropped, but then again, he did the exact same thing himself after dropping that very quote. (See ScrewAttack, Goku vs Superman on youtube to know what I'm talking about.)

 **Out Of Grief**

The two combatents engaged once again, but this time the fight was entirely different. Ron's Mystical Monkey Power gave him an enormous strength, speed, and possibly even skill advantage, but Shego's far greater experience, having spent most of her life in deadly combat, closed the gap quite a bit. More importantly, Ron discovered after very nearly getting his hand vaporized, barely pulling back in time, that he could not block her flaming hands directly. Any parries had to be made very low on her wrists, close to her elbows, as far from the heat of her plasma as possible. As the fight progressed she began interspersing her melee attacks with plasma projectiles flung from those ever-dangerous hands, the size of which were much bigger than he recalled, some bigger than his entire torso. Ron realized the cause of Kim's excessively evasive fighting style, as he found that he had to adopt many of her moves to survive. The dance of death was essentially even. With Ron's strength, a single decisive blow could put Shego out of action, but with her energy-charged hands, he would be unlikely to survive a direct hit either.

Ron was unused to fighting at such a level. It took all of his concentration to stay alive. For Shego, though, this was all second nature. She had long since developed the habit of fighting on pure instinct, while her attention focused on a different battle: the verbal one.

"When was the last time you showered? Or changed your clothes? Ewww. What, have you been sitting in your room moping this whole time? Of course, even if you did change your clothes, your outfits are all the same. You are in desperate need of some new threads. You should _pay_ the fashionistas to attack you next time, at least you'll come out looking like you live in this century. Black shirt and cargo pants, every day for your entire life? Don't you ever get bored of it?"

She went on and on, ripping him for his social life, his lack of success in school, anything and everything in his life was fair game to her. Her verbal attacks came at a blistering pace, just slightly slower than her physical attacks. Ron didn't even catch most of it, unintentionally tuning her out in his struggle to stay alive. Somewhere in the back of his mind he realized that she was treating him like he was Kim. This was the kind of banter the two of them would fling back and forth while they fought.

They traversed the gigantic room as they fought, flipping, rolling, spinning. Back and forth, forth and back again, neither able to get the upper hand. Every time Ron thought he had an opening, it turned out to be yet another dirty trick that he barely escaped from, his enhanced speed saving him from a painful, fiery death more times than he could count by the smallest of margins.

Shego's edge in experience could only take her so far, though. The longer the fight went, the more Ron felt the rhythm of it. He also began relying more and more on instinct, allowing him to actually began to examine his foe as they fought. She seemed like the same old Shego on the surface, but he could see behind that in the moments between taunts, of which there were more of as she ran out of material to attack him with. What he saw underneath it all was an emptiness, an emptiness that was all too familiar.

As her verbal attacks slowed, so did her physical ones. Maybe she was tiring? But no, Ron realized, she wasn't tiring. Her flames were just as large, her energy was just as limitless. She hadn't actually slowed at all. It was his own speed that was increasing. His focus sharpened once again, his hold on the Monkey Magic grew stronger, and he could see through all her attacks.

Rather than using the rush of power to end the fight, Ron continued to exchange blows with a fraction of his attention, while he tried to figure out that thing, that thing that had been bugging him about Shego since before the fight started, that thing that was wrong with everything she'd said and how she was acting, that thing that seemed so achingly familiar...and then it came to him in a flash, physically staggering him with the weight of it. Shego tried to take advantage of the unexpected opening, but he instinctively knocked her arms apart and shoved her. She slide backwards about twenty feet, but didn't fall.

"You're a liar."

"Well yeah, doi." Shego surreptitiously rubbed the spot on her lower sternum where his hands had been. "That's kinda part of who I am. Pretty much goes with the whole supervillain thing. What did I lie about this time?"

"This isn't about fun. You're not having fun. You claimed you were just looking for the best fight you could find, but here I am fighting you at your own level, and you're not having fun at all. You're miserable."

"What do you know? You don't know me! I am having fun!" Shego snapped.

Ron shook his head. "Fists don't lie, Shego. Combat is a window into the mind. I've been fighting you for what, an hour now? What do I know? Everything. I know everything."

Shego's face hardened into a death glare. "That's bull****. Whatever kind of **** you think you learned 'through our fists' is just **** you made up in your own delusional mind. I'm not gonna listen to this ****."

"No, Shego. If I was really making things up, you would just listen and mock me. The fact that you won't listen is just proof that we both know what I'm going to say...and that it's true."

"Shut up." She whispered.

"You're wearing all black right now, but it isn't for stealth or because you just felt like a change of style, is it?"

"Shut up." She said, a little louder.

"You killed Drakken and the clone, but not because he broke your rules and they ruined your 'entertainment'."

"Shut up!"

"You killed the Seniors, Killigan, Camille Leon and Motor Ed, not because you were bored, or they made you mad by making it too easy."

"Shut the **** up right now!"

"You didn't kill Kim all those times you could've, or any other person in all the time she knew you, and it wasn't because she was the most fun person to fight against."

"SHUT UP!"

"It was because...you loved her."

"NO!"

"You loved her...just like I did."

"NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!"

She threw herself at Ron, hands blazing hotter than ever before, but he summoned his Chi and completely suppressed the flames with his own aura, grabbing both of her hands in his. She pulled and struggled and kicked, but he didn't budge, ignoring all her attacks, his body not even taking any damage. She gave one last pull with all her strength, then collapsed against his chest, sobbing uncontrollably.

"How could she leave me?" She said through her tears, sounding more like a little girl than a grown woman. "Doesn't she know I need her?"

Ron slowly let go of her hands and put his arms around her, pulling her tighter into his chest.

"Of course she left me. I was never good enough for her anyway. She's miss perfect and I'm just...me."

All of Shego's words were like the echos of his own heart, finally putting voice to the things he'd always thought but never said. His own tears began to fall.

"It was my fault. I should've known, I should've stopped it. If only I were faster, smarter, better, I could've stopped it. It's my fault she's gone."

They were both sobbing now, clinging to each other like a raincoat in a storm. There was a great release in knowing that another person could not just sympathize, but truly empathize with you. Not just that they knew what you were going through, but that they themselves were experiencing that very same thing at that very same moment. It didn't lessen the pain and grief, but it gave the strength to bear it.

They stayed like that, a couple of damaged animals licking each other's wounds, for so long that Ron once again lost track of time. Eventually, like everything in the world good and bad, it came to an end. Their moment ended with Shego roughly pushing him away and backing up, wiping away the last of her tears.

"I hope you know this doesn't change anything, sidekick. I'm still gonna kill them all. For my entertainment."

Ron gave an amused smile. "You're still saying that? After all this?"

"I'm still saying that. The truth is, even though _some_ of what you said is true, and I'm not gonna say which part, you were wrong when you said I wasn't having fun fighting you. That was the best workout I've had in years, I couldn't even fight like that against Kimmie. So you're my new Princess. And that means I have to continue my killing spree, since it seems like it'll take at least that much to get your attention."

Ron lost his amusement. "What makes you think you can get away? You can't beat me, you must know that by now."

Shego's trademark smirk finally returned in full, 100% genuine. "Oh princess, princess, princess. I'll ask you again, who do you think I am? Drakken?"

He sighed. "Are you really gonna call me that?"

"Yes. You're my replacement Princess, get used to it. Now, as I was saying. Do you really think that I, Shego, being the one one planning this op, would just waltz in here without an ace up my sleeve?"

Ron felt a sudden aprehension. Shego tapped out a code on a device attached to her wrist. He sensed the danger and threw every ounce of power he had into a Chi shield above his head just as a beam from an SDI designed to take out spacecraft burned a hole right through the roof and crashed down on him. He fell to his knees, barely holding off annihilation.

"That oughta slow you down a little." Shego turned to the closest wall and cupped her hands by her side, slowly gathering energy. When the ball of fire in her hands was bigger than she was, she shot it out in a wave more resembling the laser currently trained on Ron than flames. As the beam died away, she slumped down in exhaustion and pulled herself toward the opening she had made. "Whooo, that took a lot out of me."

Just before she disappeared from sight, she turned back to Ron, still pinned to the floor by the beam. "See you next time, Princess. I'll be sure to be stronger by then, now that I've finally got someone to chase. I'm looking forward to this new relationship."

Ron wasn't certain that he'd be making it to their next meeting. He was just holding his own against the destructive attack of the satallite beam, and was by no means certain that he would escape it. He couldn't budge and inch, for in doing so he would lessen the strength of his shield and be vaporized before he could blink. Out of options, he went with an all-or-nothing last ditch effort. He gathered all his will and focus, in that one moment channeling more power than in his entire life prior combined, and shoved his shield upward, sending a pulse of his own energy backwards along the beam. When the pulse reached the point of origin the satillite was blown apart, and Ron collapsed in the crater created by his great struggle, completely drained and barely conscious.

Minutes later, a host of GJ agents flooded the place, picking up Monkey Fist and putting him on a stretcher, and helping Ron to his feet. An agent he didn't know held him up from one side, and Dr. Director herself held him up from the other side.

"You did it. You won. I knew we could count on you."

"Yes, I won. This round. It's not over yet."

"That's more than anyone else could've done. So, who was it?"

Ron hesitated. He found he didn't want to let the peacekeeping agency in on what had been a very personal thing between him and someone it seemed he would have a long relationship with to look forward to, especially since they could do nothing with the information. "It was...someone very powerful."

"Ah, I suspected it was a new player in the game." Betty nodded sagely. "The earmarks were consistent with none of the known supervillains. So what happens next?"

Ron thought about this. It was a very legitimate question. He absolutely could not let Shego run rampant, no matter what they had shared today. "Now...I think I need to get back in touch with Wade. It's time to put Team Possible back together."


End file.
